An incredibly well-made indie fighting game. Cute characters with fun personalites, an expressive combo system, and seamless GGPO rollback netcode. The development story of how this was originally a MLP fangame, got taken down by Hasbro, and then rose from the rubble to gain its own identity through the hard work of its developers and contributions of the fanbase is honestly inspiring. The game's excellent tutorial also make it a great first fighting game for anyone looking to get into the genre.
My only complaints are the limited roster of 7 characters (so far), the story mode only having one chapter finished, and the small player base. Hopefully the developers keep supporting the game so that it eventually feels more like a complete package because the core of what's there is pretty fun so far.
My only complaints are the limited roster of 7 characters (so far), the story mode only having one chapter finished, and the small player base. Hopefully the developers keep supporting the game so that it eventually feels more like a complete package because the core of what's there is pretty fun so far.
I still think this game has one of the best executions of the "survival game where you have to make tough moral decisions" idea. As niche and frustrating as the mechanics are, the overwhelming feeling of stress and oppression they force unto the player meshes perfectly with the overarching narrative themes of determination in the face of hopelessness and survival at all costs. The strict but carefully tuned difficulty turns every decision into a contemplative weighing between morals and practicality. Its unrelenting harshness and trial-and-error nature culminates into a brilliant narrative trick at the end that screams ludonarrative in a way that's frankly ahead of its time.
While the highlight of the game is definitely chapter 4, the climactic title drop scene straight from its original Ludum Dare prototype, I found its other sci-fi thriller scenarios equally as interesting, except for that damn desert stage. Honestly while the desert stage had some cool ideas, the sheer amount of rng BS it also had made it probably the most unfun experience I've had in a game in a while.
The game's definitely not for everyone. I feel that many will go into it expecting a story-focused point-and-click adventure and be left disappointed by the reality of it being essentially a meter-management simulator. However, for those who can endure its initial difficulty curve and end up inexplicably Stockholm Syndrome-d into finding its mechanics enjoyable, there's actually a pretty compelling narrative to be found here.
While the highlight of the game is definitely chapter 4, the climactic title drop scene straight from its original Ludum Dare prototype, I found its other sci-fi thriller scenarios equally as interesting, except for that damn desert stage. Honestly while the desert stage had some cool ideas, the sheer amount of rng BS it also had made it probably the most unfun experience I've had in a game in a while.
The game's definitely not for everyone. I feel that many will go into it expecting a story-focused point-and-click adventure and be left disappointed by the reality of it being essentially a meter-management simulator. However, for those who can endure its initial difficulty curve and end up inexplicably Stockholm Syndrome-d into finding its mechanics enjoyable, there's actually a pretty compelling narrative to be found here.
2020
Actually really impressive how the game manages to perfectly re-contextualize the gameplay mechanics of both prophunt and speedrunning into a thematically consistent and artistically compelling narrative. Also love that it's only like 20 minutes long. Can't afford to waste any more time, after all...
2016
Some neat ideas. Does some cool things with perspective near the end. Controls were a bit stiff though and the story didn't really grab me. Also, while the puzzles were kinda clever, the heavy use of reset really slowed the game down and just became annoying after a while.
2022
Chinese porn game. It's fine. Gameplay is just simplified QTE punch-out. Not much going on there, really. Story's marginally funny. Thankfully it leans more towards slapstick rather than male vindictiveness, as I assumed it would from the description. You play as incel Ryu, fighting off against five fighting game girl parodies (just five, it's pretty short). Throughout the fights, their clothes get torn off, as you would expect. There's a couple of CG sex scenes each; full mandarin voice acting too, which is nice. Art's actually pretty good. It's probably the best thing about the game honestly, and I'd love to see more of it, perhaps in an actual video game next time.
2020
The mixing of horror and comedy can be a tricky balancing act. Too much comedy and the horror elements can turn kitschy and ridiculous. Too much horror and the comedy turns into a lame distraction. Discover My Body, thanks to its punchy, ingenious writing, sufficiently manages both without taking too much of your time.
The term Kafkaesque is often used to describe works focusing on transformative body horror but it's rarer to see Metamorphosis-inspired fiction that seems to understand the famous author's wit and tries a similar kind of comedy. The game manages to be funny and horrifying! Yames' excellent brand of dark humor has been even more developed in his latest game Growing My Grandpa!, a game that further explores these themes of body transformation and human connection. And while this particular game is but a simple, five minute exploration of the idea, it can still serve as an excellent introduction to the developer's uniquely surreal aesthetic and pungent writing that is wonderfully expanded upon in their later projects.
The term Kafkaesque is often used to describe works focusing on transformative body horror but it's rarer to see Metamorphosis-inspired fiction that seems to understand the famous author's wit and tries a similar kind of comedy. The game manages to be funny and horrifying! Yames' excellent brand of dark humor has been even more developed in his latest game Growing My Grandpa!, a game that further explores these themes of body transformation and human connection. And while this particular game is but a simple, five minute exploration of the idea, it can still serve as an excellent introduction to the developer's uniquely surreal aesthetic and pungent writing that is wonderfully expanded upon in their later projects.
2012
boxing really needs to return to its roots
2019
(Content warning: rape)
A hentai gacha game with a dark magical girl theme. Aesthetically and plot-wise it liberally takes a lot of inspiration from Madoka Magica. There's actually two versions of the game, Magicami, the "safe" version which does not have sex scenes, and Magicami DX, the nsfw version which does. This review is for the DX version, since I imagine most people play that one, obviously.
Aesthetically, the game looks pretty dang good, especially for a browser game. The girls are cute and they have a sizeable variety of magical girl outfits to wear, and roll for of course. I actually quite like the monster designs. Since the theme is dark magical girl porn, the monsters accordingly are also sexy demon creatures, some of which have been horrifyingly transformed into pretty disturbing abominations. You can see the spider demon in the cover art here I think, where she has like sexy human legs instead of spider legs, it's frankly disturbing but also kind of rad, not gonna lie.
The characters are pretty cute, and personality wise actually rather likeable, a lot of which I think is owed to the quite decent voice acting. The goal, I think, is to endear you to the characters so that you can be adequately horrified when they, in accordance to the plot, horribly lose and then get tortured and uh, raped, by the monsters. A lot of the sex scenes I'm pretty sure are rape scenes by the way, so if you were looking for something more Jun'ai or vanilla, there's probably better games for you to play. And let me tell you, for better or worse, the voice acting is horrifyingly good during the rape scenes. They, uh, really sell the tortured screaming, I guess. Even the guy main character has some pretty gnarly screams of despair. The performances as a whole are like, genuinely disturbing and don't exactly put me in the mood, personally. I'm not really sure why these are in a porn game? Though I guess if you have a rape kink, that's like, part of it, probably. They're thoughtful enough to put a content warning before the scene happens though, so that's nice.
Gameplay wise it's actually not bad, if you like jrpg combat. The animations are snappy and the dynamic camera angles combined with the clean Persona-esque UI make battles rather nice to look at. The battle music also reminds me of Persona, to be honest. It's nothing too especially interesting though, and you can just auto-battle once you get sufficiently strong enough anyway.
Overall, a pretty decent game if you have a rape fetish, but probably not worth it otherwise.
A hentai gacha game with a dark magical girl theme. Aesthetically and plot-wise it liberally takes a lot of inspiration from Madoka Magica. There's actually two versions of the game, Magicami, the "safe" version which does not have sex scenes, and Magicami DX, the nsfw version which does. This review is for the DX version, since I imagine most people play that one, obviously.
Aesthetically, the game looks pretty dang good, especially for a browser game. The girls are cute and they have a sizeable variety of magical girl outfits to wear, and roll for of course. I actually quite like the monster designs. Since the theme is dark magical girl porn, the monsters accordingly are also sexy demon creatures, some of which have been horrifyingly transformed into pretty disturbing abominations. You can see the spider demon in the cover art here I think, where she has like sexy human legs instead of spider legs, it's frankly disturbing but also kind of rad, not gonna lie.
The characters are pretty cute, and personality wise actually rather likeable, a lot of which I think is owed to the quite decent voice acting. The goal, I think, is to endear you to the characters so that you can be adequately horrified when they, in accordance to the plot, horribly lose and then get tortured and uh, raped, by the monsters. A lot of the sex scenes I'm pretty sure are rape scenes by the way, so if you were looking for something more Jun'ai or vanilla, there's probably better games for you to play. And let me tell you, for better or worse, the voice acting is horrifyingly good during the rape scenes. They, uh, really sell the tortured screaming, I guess. Even the guy main character has some pretty gnarly screams of despair. The performances as a whole are like, genuinely disturbing and don't exactly put me in the mood, personally. I'm not really sure why these are in a porn game? Though I guess if you have a rape kink, that's like, part of it, probably. They're thoughtful enough to put a content warning before the scene happens though, so that's nice.
Gameplay wise it's actually not bad, if you like jrpg combat. The animations are snappy and the dynamic camera angles combined with the clean Persona-esque UI make battles rather nice to look at. The battle music also reminds me of Persona, to be honest. It's nothing too especially interesting though, and you can just auto-battle once you get sufficiently strong enough anyway.
Overall, a pretty decent game if you have a rape fetish, but probably not worth it otherwise.
2002
chucksters can eat my ass
Well-made gacha auto-battler with an extreme emphasis on cuteness. Gameplay is typical of the genre, where the only real decisions you make are team composition, and which gear to grind for with your daily stamina. As usual, there's pretty much never any reason to turn off the auto battle and fast forward buttons.
What sets this game apart is the fully voice acted story, fully animated anime style cutscenes, and legitimately banger music. Cygames puts a lot of thought into making their games look extremely polished and professional, and they put more effort than I would expect for a gacha game.
For example, every time there's an event, you hear an instrumental of the main event theme on the main event page. There's a different version of the same theme throughout the event stories. And by the time you get done with the event quest, you get presented with a fully animated musical credit sequence where the theme now has lyrics, sung by the main characters featured during the event. It's cute, and indicative of way more time and effort put in than I've seen in other games in the genre. This amount of polish is even more apparent in their latest game, Uma Musume.
The biggest criticism I have (outside of being a gacha game), is that the overall tone of the game is waaay to cute for me, personally. As much as I love wholesome cuteness, most of the dialogue seriously makes me feel like I'm losing IQ points. There's kawaii, and then there's saccharine, and somehow this game has managed to go even beyond that. All the characters are just SO DUMB and since they're trying to appeal to otaku, they of course are all in love with the main character and do the same blushing stammering bits where they don't want to reveal their true feelings to you, yada yada. I really like the character designs though. they're all pretty iconic and fit their respective character personalities while consistently being cute-sexy, which seems to be what they're going for.
Overall, this actually one of the better gacha games I've played. Gameplay is braindead as usual, but the characters are cute and the story's perfect if you find yourself really needing just like a huge dollop of kawaii anime bullcrap.
What sets this game apart is the fully voice acted story, fully animated anime style cutscenes, and legitimately banger music. Cygames puts a lot of thought into making their games look extremely polished and professional, and they put more effort than I would expect for a gacha game.
For example, every time there's an event, you hear an instrumental of the main event theme on the main event page. There's a different version of the same theme throughout the event stories. And by the time you get done with the event quest, you get presented with a fully animated musical credit sequence where the theme now has lyrics, sung by the main characters featured during the event. It's cute, and indicative of way more time and effort put in than I've seen in other games in the genre. This amount of polish is even more apparent in their latest game, Uma Musume.
The biggest criticism I have (outside of being a gacha game), is that the overall tone of the game is waaay to cute for me, personally. As much as I love wholesome cuteness, most of the dialogue seriously makes me feel like I'm losing IQ points. There's kawaii, and then there's saccharine, and somehow this game has managed to go even beyond that. All the characters are just SO DUMB and since they're trying to appeal to otaku, they of course are all in love with the main character and do the same blushing stammering bits where they don't want to reveal their true feelings to you, yada yada. I really like the character designs though. they're all pretty iconic and fit their respective character personalities while consistently being cute-sexy, which seems to be what they're going for.
Overall, this actually one of the better gacha games I've played. Gameplay is braindead as usual, but the characters are cute and the story's perfect if you find yourself really needing just like a huge dollop of kawaii anime bullcrap.
The writing is bad and cringy. The art and animation however, is extremely well-done. The hand-drawn 2D animation has 1000% more love and effort put into it than the stiff, uncanny movement of some of the shoddy Live2D work I've seen in some other popular horny visual novels. I know the sex scenes are the main draw here, but the sheer quality of the artwork just kinda makes me wish the story was worth anything at all.
2016
Every single update made the game less and less like Team Fortress 2 and therefore worse.
2014
Had some cool new ideas for the series like life gems and power stance-ing but also some missteps like the torch mechanic making the environment look awful and adaptability making the game feel like shit to play. Just overall a mixed bag of innovation. Also half the bosses are just dudes in armor.
2020
A fun free game that the developer himself admits is pretty much just fanart bait. The art is cute and stylish, and the characters themselves are excellent at appealing to a very specific taste. I'm actually pretty impressed by how the designs manage to feel cool and sexy without being revealing at all or feeling fanservice-y. I almost feel like I need to hear a fashion designer's insight on these outfits. The puzzle gameplay is quick and snappy and the main music track is infectiously bouncy. Pretty much the entire experience feels quick, polished, and to the point which is a great way to make a free game like this go viral for a bit, but also causes a lot of the new fans to want a bit more. And while there's not much to the game, what's there is quality. It really is amazing how much I ended up liking all of the girls despite them having such few lines of dialogue.
2024
A pale imitation of Parappa the Rapper, and yet I cannot deny the funkiness of the beats. When I first played the game, it kinda ran like garbo, but over time it seems like they managed to tweak it enough so that the timings aren't affected at all anymore, which is great. The art style obviously continues the sort of blocky, flat look that many of the old Newgrounds mascots all seem to have. In fact, the very inclusion of those mascots into the game don't even feel that out of place here and also gave me some unexpected nostalgia. It's a little weird to think that kids nowadays will only know Pico and the Tankmen from this game instead of y'know, Newgrounds, but I digress.
The music of course, is actually really bumpin', which is good because otherwise the game wouldn't work at all. The use of chopped up Banjo-Kazooie-esque electronically manipulated voice beeps works flawlessly into the mix and the gradual transformation of the simplistic turn-taking rap battles into blossoming simultaneous duets is a welcome innovation to the Parappa formula I wasn't expecting. The genres start off as hip-hop-ish but over time takes cues from increasingly higher-bpm electronic stuff with some dance inspired tracks as well as, unexpectedly, some gabber type beats? It's all pretty danceable really and I found myself swinging my head to most of the songs.
I'm not too familiar with the fan community, as I'm probably at least a decade too old for it, but it seems like there's a pretty big modding and youtuber scene associated with the game, which is good news for the longevity of any rhythm game, really. It also seems like mods will be fully supported in the full game, which is always nice to see. Overall the developers seem pretty capable, so I'm looking forward to the full release, whenever that happens!
The music of course, is actually really bumpin', which is good because otherwise the game wouldn't work at all. The use of chopped up Banjo-Kazooie-esque electronically manipulated voice beeps works flawlessly into the mix and the gradual transformation of the simplistic turn-taking rap battles into blossoming simultaneous duets is a welcome innovation to the Parappa formula I wasn't expecting. The genres start off as hip-hop-ish but over time takes cues from increasingly higher-bpm electronic stuff with some dance inspired tracks as well as, unexpectedly, some gabber type beats? It's all pretty danceable really and I found myself swinging my head to most of the songs.
I'm not too familiar with the fan community, as I'm probably at least a decade too old for it, but it seems like there's a pretty big modding and youtuber scene associated with the game, which is good news for the longevity of any rhythm game, really. It also seems like mods will be fully supported in the full game, which is always nice to see. Overall the developers seem pretty capable, so I'm looking forward to the full release, whenever that happens!